Leavey School of Business News Blog

Business Today

Wednesday, Jul. 13, 2011 5:23 PM

Armed with the zeal of the startup and the drive to create jobs in California, some 29 entrepreneurs from around the state will kick off the second fully subsidized California Program for Entrepreneurs (CAPE) this weekend at Santa Clara University.

Class members of 2011 are trying to build businesses in everything from allergy alerts to fashionable grocery totes, cancer treatment systems to wind-farm power storage. The cohort arrives on campus Friday, July 15, for orientation and the first of four weekends of on-site classes.

Through November the group will participate free of charge in a series of classes, workshops, mentorships and networking led by Santa Clara business faculty and augmented by the unique Silicon Valley connections of the University's Leavey School of Business.

“With our faculty equipping these new business leaders with marketing, finance, operations, and strategic management expertise, these innovations will soon be in the marketplace and adding to California’s economic well-being,” said Daniel Aguiar, co-founder of CAPE and executive director of the business school's Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, which puts on the program.

“Consumers are looking for products and services which help them improve health, reduce energy consumption, and manage increasingly complex technology,” he added. “Our participants have innovative ideas to meet these needs.”

The success of the 2010 CAPE pilot inspired the growth of its second group.

“Members of our first class have gone on to place their products with major retailers and move into national networks,” said Drew Starbird, business school dean and co-founder of the program, “This program helps lead the way to prosperity for communities around California."

The program’s expansion was supported by members of the Leavey School of Business Advisory Board, who provided scholarships for the 2011 participants. The school’s Executive Development Center also has continued its generous subsidy of the course.

Wednesday, Jun. 1, 2011 3:15 PM

From making T-shirts to matching up nonprofits with needy groups around the world, a number of soon-to-be SCU grads are planning to spend their time after graduation building and working at businesses they created while on campus.

Josh Bois, a graduating senior in the OMIS department, will spend this summer ramping up a business that he’s built over the past three years or so -- Global Good Media, part of the Global Good Group network -- with an Atlanta-based partner. Their marketing and consulting business has helped about 100 businesses in the U.S. and worldwide with services including website management, search-engine optimization, technology consulting and social-media marketing. The company uses the services of about 10 graduate-student interns, and currently has about a dozen ongoing clients.

He expects the business to grow to support him after he moves back to his hometown of Orange County, and credits Santa Clara University with making him feel empowered for the future. “My business’s mission is to change the world by connecting people, businesses and information around the world,” he said. "Santa Clara helped me feel I can achieve that."

Finance major Sol Tran, who just won CIE’s Outstanding Student Entrepreneur award, will be working on a business called SocialOven, which will use proprietary technology and his own skill at analyzing Facebook advertising opportunities to place ads for retailers and other companies strategically on Facebook pages. He’s doing similar work for another company at the moment, but he says they’ve worked out a deal where he’ll strike out on his own soon.

“Eventually I’m going to want to build my own product and make it more sophisticated,” he says. “I’ll either find an angel investor or work a side job and gather the funds I need.”

Another graduating student, Michael Kawamoto, will continue to work on his T-shirt business, Aloha Coterie, as a part-time endeavor when he’s not busy with his new full-time job in PricewaterhouseCooper’s tax department.

Kawamoto has printed over 2,000 shirts for groups at SCU and other schools, and donates a portion of the proceeds toward raising $5,000 for the charity:water organization, which works on what Kawamoto calls the “oftentimes overlooked crisis” of clean water access worldwide.

Daniel Aguiar, director of entrepreneurship programs at the Leavey School of Business, says entrepreneurship is picking up at SCU, with a rise in membership in the student club, a strong increase in internship opportunities at startups around Silicon Valley, and a revamped CIE to help with resources and classes.

“The potential has always been here for significant entrepreneurship taking root here at SCU,” said Aguiar. “I think the years ahead are going to be very exciting for SCU-grown entrepreneurs.”